The invention concerns an ammunition magazine for stowing large-caliber ammunition in a military tank with an intake rack comprising rows of essentially horizontal intake tubes positioned one above and next to another for accommodating shells, whereby the rack can be lowered into the tank's ammunition bunker from above.
An ammunition magazine of this type is described in U.S. Pat Nos. 4 562 785 and 4 580 482 for example. The magazine described in the latter document is composed of several adjacent intake racks that can be lowered empty into a tank bunker from above and then screwed together. The magazine is conventionally loaded by the crew once the racks have been secured.
This component-by-component introduction of the magazine takes a considerable amount of time, inasmuch as the unfired shells must be removed again once the racks are in place, resulting in multiple stowing and unstowing. The shells can also sustain damage by being shifted around so much, and some can even eventually become unusable.